This completely depends on the ratios and the crimes and a lot of other factors. What if the person fleeing is a suspected murderer? I’d rather see a police chase potentially endangering innocents than allowing someone definitely endangering innocents walk free.
Another example, which is very common, is that the person fleeing is under the influence of some drug. Allowing that person to drive off is also endangering innocents, sometimes more and sometimes less than a police chase would.
My point is that police chases are not something you can just get rid of completely and think you’re protecting the public. But I agree with the purpose of the article, if there has been a huge increase in dangerous police chases after some change in leadership, it’s very likely that the police are to blame for bad decision making on whether to give chase or not.
Again, as I said before, my original comment was replying to the idea of never giving chase and always trying to catch them later, which is not always the best option.
Except that it is always the better option. There is NO scenario where having two insane people running around in 2 ton vehicles is better than one. Let the person go, get a helicopter following him (it should be easy if he’s driving erratically) and apprehend when he inevitably stops. Police have resources besides sheer brute force, they should use THOSE rather than the gun and the police chase.
So you’re saying a police giving chase is always as dangerous a driver as someone drunk beyond their ears? And a 10 min chase ending in a crash is always worse than someone driving around for an hour potentially running over several times more people only to then crash either way?
Of course in most cases I agree brute force is not the correct option, but there are situations where it’s needed.
This completely depends on the ratios and the crimes and a lot of other factors. What if the person fleeing is a suspected murderer? I’d rather see a police chase potentially endangering innocents than allowing someone definitely endangering innocents walk free.
Another example, which is very common, is that the person fleeing is under the influence of some drug. Allowing that person to drive off is also endangering innocents, sometimes more and sometimes less than a police chase would.
My point is that police chases are not something you can just get rid of completely and think you’re protecting the public. But I agree with the purpose of the article, if there has been a huge increase in dangerous police chases after some change in leadership, it’s very likely that the police are to blame for bad decision making on whether to give chase or not.
Again, as I said before, my original comment was replying to the idea of never giving chase and always trying to catch them later, which is not always the best option.
Except that it is always the better option. There is NO scenario where having two insane people running around in 2 ton vehicles is better than one. Let the person go, get a helicopter following him (it should be easy if he’s driving erratically) and apprehend when he inevitably stops. Police have resources besides sheer brute force, they should use THOSE rather than the gun and the police chase.
So you’re saying a police giving chase is always as dangerous a driver as someone drunk beyond their ears? And a 10 min chase ending in a crash is always worse than someone driving around for an hour potentially running over several times more people only to then crash either way?
Of course in most cases I agree brute force is not the correct option, but there are situations where it’s needed.